Outta Here....

Alright well sadly this was my last week in Nkulumane.  Gonna miss that place so much. I grew to love those members a lot.  Getting transferred sucks sometimes haha oh well.  So yeah now I'm serving in a small town called Chegutu.  If you can find it on a map I will be impressed.  I am back in Shona land so I'm no longer speaking the clicking language haha.  And my new comp is Elder Mokoena from South Africa. Dope lil guy.  I'll let you know more about him next week. I literally just met him 20 minutes ago after the bus dropped me off and then we went straight to the internet cafe.  He also is only on his 3rd transfer so he's pretty fresh still. The other guys in my district are young on mission too. So I'm the oldest in this district by almost a year hahaha so weird.  But yeah now I live in a super nice house apparently. Which is soooooo refreshing after living in the two worst houses in this mission haha so excited. Also I've heard this area is super productive!  So thats my transfer news.

My last week in Nkulumane was awesome though.  We baptized the Tandire family and it was so awesome! Man I love those guys.  They were so happy after the baptism and yesterday at church! It was so cool.  Sis Tandire bore her testimony after the baptism and said that she had been waiting for this moment for a long time and was very happy to finally be baptized into the true church.  Powerful.  They had been looking long and hard for a good church for the family and thats when we came in.  So awesome.  So yeah in the past emails I spelt their name "Thandile" because that's how we thought they said it but its been "Tandire" this whole time and we didn't know until we started to fill out the baptismal record with them. I'll add some pictures of them! Sis Tandire is so funny. The other day she was asking about if she could send her husband to be a missionary after they were baptized lol so we kind of explained how it goes and then she started talking about making her children to be missionaries.  And Elder McDougal was like, "Well ultimately its their choice" and Sis Tandire said, "Umm well as long as he is still eating MY sadza, he will do what I say" hahahahahaha and then we all just started laughing so hard. Its so cool to see how they already want to be missionaries and share our message with others. Even the last appointment we had with them, her sister joined us and we taught her the first lesson and she was super interested! Awesome.

We also had zone conference on Thursday and it was awesome, we watched the Christmas Devotional and then they was like a talent show and a ping pong tourney (in which I lost the first game 11-0 and was thus eliminated. low key embarassing hahaha) and then we played football and soccer and other stuff. Kind of felt like recess in elementary school lol but still fun.  The winner of the ping pong tourney was Elder Fili, one of my previous companions and it was so sick  He is too good and was just messing with everyone he played against. So funny. Love that guy. I took a lot of pictures at zone conference so I'll attach those as well. 

T'was quite sad leaving my area. When I told people I was leaving a lot of them were really upset and it was hard to leave all my friends but I'll still be able to stay in touch with them.  And I left the area with 11 people on baptismal date so I hope they all go through! I took so many pictures on Sunday when I went around saying goodbye to everyone haha so I'll see how many i can send. 

Anywho. I'm excited for this new transfer.  No longer the district leader, just the senior companion so thats dope.  Also, I wont be able to email next Monday because it is Christmas and I will be skyping my family. Still feel free to email me but I wont be able to respond until the week after next. Love you all and I know this church is true.

Stay Steady Grindin'

Oh and Merry Christmas!

-Elder Anderson

The Ndlovu family.  One of my favorites.  Regina is the one next to me and I call her sisiwami which means my sister and she calls me bhudiwami which means my brother haha. The mother said that I was part of her family now and that it was going to be hard to say bye to one of her children. Gonna miss these guys.

Kudzi, this guy always worked with us and he's only 17.

My Friend Melony

The Ndlovu's, the crazy children I always talk about. When I told them I was leaving, they got mad, especially the one wearing the pink dress, her names Mbali and she's crazy. She said, pointing to McDougal, "This one should leave! He isn't fun!" hahahaha it was so funny I was dying. Love these kids.

The Tandire's baptism

Tandire's. Bro Tandire wasn't there when i went to say goodbye 

Buisile on the left, and Marvellous on the right. Marvellous is one of our recent converts. 

 Ashylene and Ashton. Ashton is my bro hahaha he was so sad when i told him I was leaving. 

I dont know the surname of this family but they stay in the other elders' area and we always went to dinner with them. Nozithelo is the name of the one in the bottom picture and she's the funniest person I have met here. Chillest family ever.

Future, the most powerful kid every. we baptized him when i first got here and he's already brought 3 friends to church and had us start teaching them. He's awesome.

A Week In The Life

Okay so we started the day off playin basketball as a zone and I wrecked everyone.  I was so happy to finally play again.  Swatted the crap out of my trainer who is now my zone leader hahahahaha. So that was most of the day and then the two internet cafe's were full so we did our shopping and now we have only a few minutes to email for today before we have to go to a family home evening. 

The Thandile's are still super dope.  This week we asked them how the gospel has started to bless them and their testimonies to us were so powerful.  They have started studying the Book of Mormon and Bible as a family every night and praying together and they all come to church and they started doing family history and they told us how much happier they have been as a family and how their relationships have gotten stronger and they feel more love as a family and man it was just awesome. The spirit was so strong in that home.  They even came to the stake conference we had this week and they were the only investigators we had came to it! I love this family.   They're getting baptized this Saturday!

So there is a new elder in our district, Elder Aden, from Star freaking Idaho.  So now 3 of the 4 elders in my district are from Idaho hahahahaha what in the world. So dope tho. I actually met him at this stake thing right before he left so thats dope.  

On a somewhat related note, I bought a sack of potatoes last week.

But yeah the stake conference was so powerful! There was a choir that sang some songs and they sang hymn 7 and it was soooo dope. The spirit filled the conference. There were so many people there it was awesome. Its so cool to see that many saints all together like that.

Found some new investigators this week that are pretty promising. One of them is named Yosuf so thats funny. Sorry if there are any Yosuf's reading this right now.

So my companion have a joke where we make fun of church names because there are some that are too funny. Such as, "Holy Ghost Explosion Church", "Resurrection and Fire", "Pentecostal Evangelical Christ's Church" So we always just make up a chain of random gospel words. too funny.

So yeah thats all for this week. Sorry for not having more time but we had a solid week. Gave some more people baptismal dates. So sick.

Love you all and hope you have a super good week!

Stay Steady Grindin.

-Elder Anderson

My boy Elder Taloa

 Took this candle and had my comp snap some pics by the light the world poster in our house

Took some pictures of our house

Rich Gang

December Shenanigans

Ya know when everything is going super well and then one little thing can make everything not go super well anymore? That's kinda how this week was. Lemme explain.

So we found 8 new investigators this week and gave a couple of them baptismal dates! 4 of them came from this returned missionary named Stewart and he wants us to teach his whole family because he is the only member so we taught them and 2 of his brothers came to church yesterday! So sick.

There's this little girl named Gugulethu that always comes to church but no one in here family is a member. She's like 7 years old but the smartest person ever. And one day she told us she wanted us to come and meet her family so we did this week and we found out she has two siblings that are older and always come to church but aren't baptized.  Hahaha  So we are gonna start teaching them this week.  And the parents are super chill about everything and they dont even go to church to we are hoping to work with them and get them to come as well!   They promised to come to church yesterday but they didnt come. Whats new? lol

Also we met with the Thandile's again  the other day and man they are so cool. We taught them about the word of wisdom and they were so willing to drop coffee and tea and follow it. It was crazy. They obviously had some questions but they totally understood why God gives us that commandment and they said they would have no problem leaving it. We asked if they had any concerns or questions at the end of the lesson and brother Thandile was like, "Ahhh no I'm just... happy" and then they both expressed how grateful they were to be taught  about the true gospel and man it was so powerful.  Love these guys. They'll be baptized on the 16th!

So everything was going super well until Saturday.  We planned to work all day in Pumula so we started off by visiting some new investigators that side and we told them both about church and described where it was and everything and they committed to come! And then we went to the meetinghouse to visit the members that live there and the baba told us that church on Sunday was going to be in Nkulumane for both groups...... So a whole week of telling our people in Pumula that church would be in Pumula.... and then he tells us that.... Saturday afternoon...... hahah  so we spent the rest of the day telling people that church would be in Nkulumane but its super far to walk from Pumula and its hard to describe the place we meet at there and man. It was a struggle. We talked to some members that said they would help us but then they it didn't really work out. So we had 0 of our Pumula investigators at church...... Man I was so upset hahaha last week to have 8 people, 5 of them with baptismal dates come to church and then this week to have 0.....  Now we have to postpone their baptisms for later in December.  We should still be able to meet our goal for December which is 8 baptisms! So that should be awesome!  And we had 5 investigators come from Nkulumane so that made things a little bit better.  Man it was just frustrating to have all these plans and then everything changed the day before church... hahahaha man. Oh well. Akula worries.

There were so many members at church yesterday! People I haven't even met in the last 2 months here hahaha a lot of less actives decided to be active this week. 

We had the funniest elders quorum activity hahaha so last Sunday the elders quorum invited us to help them go and visit less actives this Saturday so we gladly agreed and showed up at the time they told us, and there were 3 people there. hahaha eventually two more came and then we split up to do the visits and two members came with us to go see this family and then they weren't around so we went to the store, bought some refreshments and met the other group back at the church hahaha.  The epitome of an elders quorum activity lol so funny. 

I figured out how to say, "I'll beat you" in Ndebele. Its "ngizogutshaya". haha try that one on for size.  Also I finally figured out how to make the "Q" click so that made things a lot easier. Can you guys imagine me bearing my testimony in a clicking language....whhaaaatttt. Coming soon.

Well that's all I got for this week. I'm excited for this month! My last Christmas in Zimbabwe... 1 year ago tomorrow was my first day in Zim!  Weird.  Anyways i hope you guys are all finding joy thru the Light the World thing. Its super easy to do as a missionary hahaha  but the Lord expects all of us to be missionaries. Ye are the light of the world.  I know that my redeemer lives and I know he leads this church. 

Also, Happy birthday sis.

Stay Steady Grindin'

Cheers,

Elder Anderson

A Couple Videos!

One of them is just kinda what our house and neighborhood looks like and the other is me messing with some kids. I always get annoyed at how much they yell "How are you?!" at us so I say it back to them all the time to give them a taste of their own medicine.  Enjoy.

Tried to get a picture off the storm and all the lights back there but it didn't look as cool as I thought it would.

Scooby. Talked about this guy a while ago. 

Baptisms from Masvingo

Thanksgiving

Where do I even start?

Robby Mugabe is no longer our president so thats crazy.  Tuesday afternoon we heard he stepped down and man... the neighborhood lit up haha big sadza mamas screaming and jumping and everyone outside cheering.  Throughout the rest of the day, we would just hear cheering every couple minutes. It was pretty cool to see that.  So now the acting president before elections next year is a dude named Munangagwa.  Everybody is happy about it but literally anything would be better than the previous president.

T'was a stellar way to start off the week and it only got better from there. 

We met with the crazy family (the Ndlovu's) again this week and played games and stuff. Then we found out that half the kids haven't been baptized and they want to be. So that was cool. Gave them all dates and started teaching them the lessons. I love teaching children because when we teach it simply it makes even more sense haha and they even understand it.

We also met a relative of this family we teach and her name is Memory and she was also very interested and the next day we put her and her sister on baptismal date as well! That brought us to a total of 11 people on baptismal date.  They are all for December so hopefully they will all come thru.  A few are starting to not be serious but most of them are very powerful!

We met with the rapper Afroman again this week and he introduced us to his whole rap group and they call themselves, "One Time For The Streets".  Dope right?  So we taught all of them the restoration and then they all committed to come to church.  At the time we weren't sure if they were serious but one of them actually came!!! The guys name is Stanley and he's the group manager and when we saw him, he was holding a triple combination hahah we were like dude where did you get that and he told us he had met with missionaries a long time ago but never came to church. Finally did tho and he was powerful. Participated in the classes and was making friends with members.  Awesome.

We had a total of 10 investigators at church. New record.  Nqo and Mduduzi came again and they enjoyed.  In our tiny Pumula group, we had 8! and then at the Nkulumane ward, the Thandile's came again! Got a lot of powerful people out here. It feel so good to have people come to church. 

Did exchanges with the zone leaders on Wednesday. Pretty cool. 

Celebrated Thanksgiving also!  Zimbabwe doesn't know what it is so we got a couple other companionships together at our place and had a bonfire and made chicken tacos.  Not the same as back home but still sick.

Had the dumbest "lesson" of my mission this week. Started when we went to the Ndlovu's (the above mentioned family) one of the times this week. We got there and started talking with the kids and then out of nowhere these three babas walk in. One of them was old and the other were like 40s but they come in and sit down and introduce themselves to us and we asked if they were friends of the family, and then the oldest guy is like, "no we are the preachers of the family." (In my head, I called bull ish on him because the last time, we learned that the dad and mom and kids all go to different churches) And then this guys like, "So... what....do YOU believe in?" And from there, Elder McDougal and I just blasted these guys with doctrine, quoting scripture, using common sense and other things to just destroy these guys with everything they tried to throw at us. (important sidenote, during the discussion, all the children slowly left the room and went and hid in the parents bedroom) The dumbest part was that we could tell the only reason they came was to bash with us and even when we would confound them they would try to twist our words and try to confuse us and even try to ask another question and it was so funny.   I've experienced a lot of persecution but this was next level haha.  The cool thing was that the whole time McDougal and I were on the same page and had the same confidence that nothing they could say would confound us and it was awesome. We finally got out of there because we were late to another appointment.  They want to meet with us again so we set an appointment.  But as we left we poke our heads in the parents bedroom and all the kids whisper to us, "Get in and shut the door!" haha so we did and then the oldest kid, Jess was like, "I'm so sorry these guys come sometimes but none of us like them. They go to my dads church.  I'm scared of those men." and then the younger one was like, "Yeah they talk too much!" hahaha and then they gave us all a hug and we set another appointment and got the h out of there.  Dumbest thing ever.  Those guys were nonsense, they said all sorts of stuff like, that we were only a religion and weren't the gospel and that we didn't understand the scriptures and all sorts of stuff.  McDougal and I were on fire tho just blasting these guys it felt so good hahaha the frustrating part is that they kept going in circles and finally we told them to stop asking us all these questions and to just ask God. And they refused..... nonsense. I'm excited to go back and level them one more time and then we aren't going to see them anymore. On Sunday when we visited the children again, they told us that the preachers told them we weren't smart and that we had devils...... loser.

The whole thing was surprisingly a huge testimony builder for me.  I saw how the promise that we wont be confouded before men is so true because we teach the truth. Kind of like trying to prove to someone that 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 2. You're just gonna get roasted. And the spirit that was in that home completely left when those guys came in. The children were all afraid too haha.  I love being representatives of the true church. Makes everything so much easier haha.

The investigators I talked about last week are still progressing well and our recent converts are still powerful and are helping us find others to teach! That's helped us have a lot of success is working with members and always asking for referrals.  No clue why I haven't been doing this more for the past year but glad I finally figured it out. 

I learned how to say, "I like to eat sadza and chicken" in Ndebele. it goes, "ngiyathanda ukudla istchwala le nyama".   Nice haha

Sorry for this mess of an email.  Kind of hard to remember what order things happened. I just typed the first things that came to my head.  But yeah we had a great week and our indicators were super good!  Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and are grateful for everything God has given you. Definitely something that has humbled me is how humble the people are here even tho they have so little.  Love you guys.

Stay Steady Grindin'

Cordially,

Elder Anderson

 

Thanksgiving gathering and bonfire!

One Time For the Streets hahaha 

Gotta rep that MoveOverMSA shirt

Me and Elder Huffaker. Love this guy haha

There was this face to face broadcast this week for the stake and out of nowhere, this guy walks in! Name's Craig and we worked with him all the time in my first area but he recently moved to one of the neighboring areas here! So sick.

two of our recent converts were playing with a ton of their friends when we came to teach them so we sat them all down and taught them how to pray hahahaha

This was during interviews with President. Chilled with Fili the whole time while we waited for our interviews haha. Man I miss being this guys companion haha 

The Ndlovu's